School Team Updates – Spreading the Good Work!

During the planning stages for ECET2 Maine 2017, the planning committee asked four Title I school sites in Maine if they would like to come with a team (an administrator and 4 – 5 teachers) to ECET2. If they committed to coming as a team, they would receive a $500 grant to bring a slice of the conference back to their school or district.

We are pleased to say that the following sites are using a mini-grant of $500 from ECET2 Maine to bring the work back to the school/district level. Here are October updates from the four schools.

ACADEMY HILL SCHOOL: The fourth and fifth grade team from Academy Hill School would like to thank you for the inspiration for our plan! We have decided that we want to focus on PBE starting with math. We will be collaborating as a team to incorporate PBE using a math workshop model. We would like to use the $500 grant to purchase materials such as professional development books and supplemental materials to use in our classrooms. Before we begin using this model we plan to participate in a book talk using a book that supports our PBE math journey. Some of the other things that we will be doing is presenting to our staff what we learned at the ECET2 Conference, presenting our project idea, and we have scheduled a meeting for next Thursday with our new Curriculum Person/PBE consultant. We will keep you posted.

AUGUSTA: Our goal is to share our new learning of childhood trauma and how toxic stress damages children’s brains. We are going to network with educators we met at ECET2 who have done work in this area and ask if they may be available to come and speak to our teachers. This will be followed by an after-school book study – Fostering Resilient Learners. The school will also allocate money to buy additional books for staff to help deepen their knowledge on childhood trauma in our schools and effective interventions. In March they will develop a session on childhood trauma to be offered for the district’s workshop day. This will be a great way to spread a piece of our learning from ECET2 throughout the school district.

RSU 24 – The Peninsula School: The Peninsula School would like to learn more about ACES and how to better meet the needs of our students. We need to learn more about identifying traumatized students. We also need to learn strategies that support students who have experienced trauma. We would like to purchase resources for the staff including: Fostering Resilient Learner: Strategies for Creating a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom, Trauma- Sensitive School: learning Communities Transforming Children’s Lives, and The Trauma- Informed School. We would also like to invite Brittany Ray to join us for a staff meeting on the topic of ACES. Our overall goal is to be better informed, more responsive to students who are at-risk and to move forward as a community to create a Trauma-Sensitive School.

RSU 29: The RSU 29 team of teachers and administrators who were in attendance at the ECET2 Maine 2017 Waterville conference are interested in forming an in-house, teacher-led professional development committee. This committee would work to bring teacher inspired and led professional development mini sessions to our district. These sessions would follow the ECET2 model, with mini sessions to provide contact hours in topics identified as desirable. These sessions would be held after school, light refreshments would be provided and collegiality would be encouraged. Topics to be examined could include effective instruction, performance based education, how to’s (tech especially), and other current trends in education. Contact hours would be offered and the sessions would be open to educational technicians as well.